Jack Smith: Trump Is a Criminal

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

From: Statement of Jack Smith Former Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice before the Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives January 22, 2026

During my tenure as Special Counsel, we followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law.  I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.  President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.  Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned.   

Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.  President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the 1 congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it.  Over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted that day, a fact we should never forget.   

And, as set forth in the original and superseding indictments issued in the Southern District of Florida, President Trump stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after he left office in January 2021 and he repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.  Highly sensitive information was held in non-secure locations, including a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.  Tens of thousands of people came to the social club during the time period when those classified documents were stored there. 

As I testify before the Committee today, I want to be clear: I stand by my decisions as Special Counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump.  Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.  If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.  No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account.  So that is what I did.  To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant, which I had no intention of doing.  This is why I appreciate the opportunity to appear today and to correct the false and misleading narratives advanced about our work.  I am prepared to do so while adhering to the Justice Department’s authorization governing the scope of my testimony and while constrained by Judge Cannon’s order restricting the discussion of Volume II of my report regarding the classified documents case.  To that end, and as a result of Judge Cannon’s order and the Justice Department’s interpretation of that order, I will not be able to discuss the contents of Volume II of my report, and can only discuss matters with respect to that case that are set forth in the indictment or other public filings.  Similarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.imilarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.

January 6

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Daniela Altimari:

In 2024, Democrats campaigned on a message that democracy was at risk by highlighting the harrowing Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

The warning, however, didn’t land with voters who were focused more on the cost of living than high-minded appeals about the rule of law and the fate of democracy.

Now, five years after the attack, the campaign dynamics of Jan. 6 have shifted in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections.

...

 “We can’t ignore that it happened, and we can’t ignore why it happened,” said Brian Lemek, executive director of Defend the Vote, a political action committee that backs Democratic congressional candidates. “But we don’t need to relitigate all that all the time. We need to focus on what people care about today.”

...

While concerns about democracy and fair elections continue to rank high among Democrats, those issues have found less traction with Republican voters.

An Economist/YouGov poll released in July found that 89 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independent voters viewed Jan. 6 as “a violent insurrection.’’ (Meanwhile, 51 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of independents saw it as “legitimate political discourse.”)

“Trump’s reelection made it really clear [that voters] were able to overlook that violent assault on our democracy to improve their day to day lives,’’ Lemek said.

But some Democrats say there’s room in their 2026 messaging for a corruption angle that includes invoking the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

Trump “did whatever the hell he wants, and he’s going to try to do that for the next three years,’’ Lemek said. Democrats “need to put some blocks in place to prevent him from causing any more damage. "

Jack Smith Testimony

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

On New Year's Eve, the GOP majority on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of special counsel Jack Smith's December 17 testimony.

For nearly three decades I have been a career prosecutor. I have served during both Republican and Democratic administrations and I've been guided by those principles in every role I've held. I continued to honor those principles when I was appointed to serve 7 as special counsel in November of 2022. 

The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump  engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.

Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President  Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. 

I remain grateful for the counsel, judgment, and advice of my team as I executed my responsibilities. I am both saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for doing their jobs  and for having worked on those cases. These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs.

I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump's political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election. We took our actions based on the facts and the law, the very lessons I learned early in my career  as a prosecutor. We followed Justice Department policies and observed legal requirements.

The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our  confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.

Recent narratives about my team's work are false and misleading, including stories about our collection of toll records.  Toll records were sought for historical telephone routing information, collected after calls had taken place, identifying the incoming and outgoing call numbers, the time of the  calls and their duration. Toll records do not include the content of calls. Those records  were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation.

January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to  assaulting police that day.  Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of  Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification  of the 2020 election. 

I did not choose those Members, President Trump did. 

 

The Unqualified Dr. Antoni

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is on an ominous course.  Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he did not like a jobs report.

Trump is nominating right-wing economist Erwin John “E.J.” Antoni to head the Bureau.

Paul Kiernan at WSJ:

According to a commencement program from Northern Illinois University, Antoni earned a master’s and Ph.D. in economics from that school in 2018 and 2020, respectively, and a bachelor of arts degree from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. Antoni’s LinkedIn profile says he attended Lansdale Catholic High School outside Philadelphia from 2002 to 2006.

According to the profile, Antoni went to work in 2021 as an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin that has sued the federal government to overturn climate-change regulations. The following year, he joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a research fellow studying regional economics. He is now the foundation’s chief economist and an adviser to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a group of conservative economic commentators.

Past BLS commissioners have had extensive research experience, and many have climbed the ranks of the agency itself. Antoni doesn’t fit that profile. He doesn’t appear to have published any formal academic research since his dissertation, according to queries of National Bureau of Economic Research working papers and Google Scholar. Much of his commentary on the Heritage website praises Trump’s policies and economic record. He frequently posts on X and appears on conservative podcasts such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” where he criticized the economy under President Joe Biden and lauds Trump’s economy.

...

According to Google Scholar, Antoni’s paper has earned one citation, by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2021, while he worked there. Publications by Erika McEntarfer—the BLS commissioner who was ousted by Trump on Aug. 1, midway through her term, after a weak jobs report—have been cited 1,327 times.

Trump fired McEntarfer after a report showing significant downward revisions to prior months’ job growth. Trump supporters have since seized upon the agency’s tendency to revise some of its numbers, as well as other issues they see with the data.

Ben CasselmanAlan Rappeport and Lydia DePillis at NYT:

Economists said they found Dr. Antoni’s history of distorting economic statistics to support partisan positions more concerning.

They cited numerous examples of Dr. Antoni’s appearing to misunderstand the same government data that he will now, if confirmed, be in charge of. In one case, he cited the rising number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force, without acknowledging the role of the aging population; in another, he appeared not to know that the bureau’s measure of import prices did not include the effect of tariffs.

“He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he’s showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them,” said Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

And apparently, he was a J6er:

 

Trump’s new pick for Bureau of Labor Statistics claims to have been a “bystander” on J6 who just wandered over because he heard about it on the news.

That is a flat out lie. This is all the way up front. Tens of thousands are behind him.https://t.co/B5jDQlGmQt pic.twitter.com/6JX2omRktV

— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🏴‍☠️🇺🇸 (@jimstewartson) August 14, 2025

Corrupted Justice Department

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  In March, Trump addressed an audience at the Justice Department and accused the media and his critics of breaking the law.  It is not hard to see his remarks as a directive to prosecute them.

Ryan J. Reilly at NBC:

One of three career federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi last week has written a passionate goodbye to his colleagues, praising them for their willingness to “enter the arena” and encouraging them to not be timid amid ongoing threats to their work.

Andrew Floyd had been a leader in the Capitol Siege Section and stayed with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, now headed by interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. In an email sent Thursday, he expressed pride in seeking justice for “despicable and illegal acts against our brothers and sisters in uniform” who were victimized during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

“They entered the arena and were assaulted. Later, they were re-victimized. Called crisis actors, vilified, threatened, and told that what they experienced did not happen,” Floyd wrote in the email seen by NBC News.

...

Floyd's departure is part of what current and former officials describe as a growing "brain drain" at the FBI and Justice Department, as seasoned public servants leave under mounting political pressure and fear of retaliation.

Michael Feinberg at Lawfare:

On May 31 of this year, in a series of phone calls beginning at nine in the morning and ending that afternoon, the newly installed Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans, made clear to me that, at the direction of Dan Bongino, my career with the organization had—for all intents and purposes—come to an end.

It would be an understatement to say that I had not expected this. In fact, I was in the midst of preparing for a potential move to Washington, D.C. to take on a new position at FBI headquarters.

But, it turned out, I had made a terrible mistake: I had remained friends with someone who had appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list. How did Bongino find out about this private friendship? I honestly don’t know. What business was it of his? None at all. Was I accused of any sort of misconduct? No. It didn’t matter.

I faced a choice: get demoted or resign. I became the latest of a great many senior FBI special agents to walk out the door.

The specifics of my experience may be unique—details often are—but the broad strokes of the story have become unfortunately common in recent months, as more and more special agents are driven out of the Bureau on mere suspicion of political unreliability. These developments should be concerning to all Americans. In the past six months, the FBI—and, for that matter, the Department of Justice and intelligence community as a whole—has been forcing out a wide range of experienced personnel needed to protect our nation. Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the workforce. At a time of simultaneous wars across the globe and a return to great power competition, this makes us all less safe.

Trump's Week Two

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Adam Goldman, Devlin Barrett, and Glenn Thrush at NYT:

The Trump administration plans to scrutinize thousands of F.B.I. agents involved in Jan. 6 investigations, setting the stage for a possible purge that goes far beyond the bureau’s leaders to target rank-and-file agents, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.

The proposal came on a day that more than a dozen prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington who had worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 riot were told that they were being terminated.

The moves were a powerful indication that Mr. Trump has few qualms deploying the colossal might of federal law enforcement to punish perceived political enemies, even as his cabinet nominees offered sober assurances they would abide by the rule of law. Forcing out both agents and prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases would amount to a wide-scale assault on the Justice Department.

On Friday, interim leaders at the department instructed the F.B.I. to notify more than a half-dozen high-ranking career officials that they faced termination, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The New York Times

Gavin Bade et al. at WSJ:

The U.S. will impose tariffs on computer chips, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum, copper, oil and gas imports as soon as mid-February, President Trump said Friday, opening a new front in his looming second-term trade wars.

“That’ll happen fairly soon,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding that he also wants to hike tariffs on the European Union, which has “treated us so horribly,” though he didn’t specify when or how high the duties would be. A representative for the European Union didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The announcement for those sector-based and EU tariffs appeared separate from the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on China, which he had said would be implemented Saturday.

The duties previewed by Trump would come on top of existing tariffs on those products, he said, waving away any concern about the levies increasing inflation or snarling global supply chains.

Zack Stanton at Politico Playbook:

Week one: Trump toured wildfire damage in California and visited burned-out homes. It was presidential.

Week two: Asked by reporters whether he would visit the collision site where 67 people died on the Potomac River, Trump responded: “What’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”

Week one: Trump literally embraced California Gov. Gavin Newsom, his longtime political foe, and, as Christopher Cadelago and Melanie Mason wrote, “refrained from his sharp-edged digs and instead pledged to help lead in the recovery effort.”

Week two: Trump foisted blame for the DCA crash onto Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (“He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” Trump said at his presser) and DEI policies.

Put succinctly: “In the wake of this week’s midair collision near Washington, Mr. Trump was more than happy to jump to conclusions and pull the country apart rather than together,” NYT’s Peter Baker writes this morning.

A quick reality check: The initial FAA report says that air traffic control staffing responsibilities at Reagan were “not normal” and that one person was doing two jobs, NYT’s Sydney Ember and Emily Steel report. … ABC News notes there isn’t any affirmative action in the hiring of air traffic controllers. … The disability hiring policies that Trump criticized were actually maintained and used by his own first administration, WaPo’s Glenn Kessler writes. … The executive action Trump signed yesterday to unwind diversity programs at the Department of Transportation and the FAA came even though, as Bloomberg’s Akayla Gardner reports, there is “no evidence that diversity initiatives led to the crash, nor is there evidence that such practices result in poor operational outcomes.”

It wasn’t just his handling of the tragedy at DCA that marked the change. The other big story this week, Trump-wise, was the brouhaha over the now-blocked federal spending freeze. It lacked White House vetting. It galvanized Democratic opposition. It caused the Trump administration to walk it back — and then walk back the walkback. It amounts to a quick shift for the White House “from inaugural euphoria to the realities of governing,” WSJ’s Natalie Andrews and Meridith McGraw write this morning

Trump v. Law and Norms

Our next book is titled The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics.

Peter Baker at NYT:

He freed even the most violent of the rioters who assaulted the Capitol in his name four years ago. Out of pique over questions of loyalty, he stripped former advisers facing credible death threats of their security details. Disregarding a law passed with bipartisan support and upheld by the Supreme Court, he allowed the Chinese-owned TikTok app to remain in use in the United States despite serious national security concerns.

Not satisfied to simply eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, he ordered government workers to snitch on anyone suspected of not going along or face “adverse consequences,” a practice familiar to anyone of a certain age who lived in Russia. He fired at least a dozen inspectors general who monitor departments for corruption and abuse in a late-night purge on Friday, ignoring a law requiring him to give Congress 30 days’ notice and provide specific reasons.

...

He decided to rewrite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as it has been understood for more than a century to declare that it does not guarantee automatic citizenship to all children born in the United States. It took just three days for a federal judge to step in and temporarily block the move, which he called “a blatantly unconstitutional order,” but the issue will surely go to the Supreme Court.

 ...

Just three days before his inauguration, he released a crypto token called $Trump that together with other family tokens rose to around $10 billion in value on paper. The tokens create new opportunities for companies and other financial players inside and outside the United States to curry favor with the new administration.

Moreover, while other presidents had wealthy patrons who enjoyed access to the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has gone so far as to surround himself with billionaires on the inaugural platform and give Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, a mandate to revamp the federal government that puts billions of dollars in his pocket through various contracts.

Trump Greenlights Violence

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the aftemath of the January 6 insurrection.

Ivana Saric at Axios:

Here are the most notorious Jan. 6 defendants impacted by Trump's executive order.

Enrique Tarrio: ex-Proud Boys leader

One of the most well known rioters to receive a pardon is Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, the former leader of the right-wing extremist Proud Boys group.Tarrio was sentenced in 2023 to 22 years in prison after being found guilty of engaging in seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6 riot, the longest prison sentence handed down in the Jan. 6 cases.
Seditious conspiracy is committed when two or more people in the U.S. conspire to overthrow, destroy, seize the property of or levy war against the U.S. government, or to prevent the execution of any U.S. law.

Zoom in: While Tarrio wasn't at the Capitol riot himself, prosecutors argued that he maintained command over the Proud Boys during that time and took credit for what unfolded on behalf of the group.Tarrio's mother posted on X Monday night that her son was being released. "Tarrio is free!" she wrote.

Stewart Rhodes: founder of Oath Keepers

Trump commuted the sentence of Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia group Oath Keepers.Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2023 for seditious conspiracy, after he helped lead a plot to halt the certification of the 2020 election results.
Rhodes was released from prison early Tuesday morning, Reuters reported.

 Trump pardons Proud Boys leaders

Three other Proud Boys leaders — Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Ethan Nordean — were all military veterans and Proud Boy leaders who had their sentences commuted by Trump.Biggs and Rehl were sentenced for seditious conspiracy and other charges in their Jan. 6 cases, with Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Rehl to 15 years in prison.
Nordean was sentenced to 18 years in prison after also being found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
It was not immediately clear when the trio would be released.
Kelly Meggs: Oath Keepers leader

One of Rhodes' top deputies, Kelly Meggs, also had his sentence commuted by Trump.Meggs, a former Florida leader of the Oath Keepers, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other felonies.
His wife, Connie Meggs, also received a pardon for her role in the riot, per Reuters.

Go deeper: Trump pardons most Jan. 6 defendants

Jack Smith's Final Report

 Our next book is tentatively titled The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.   Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage at NYT:

The Justice Department released a 137-page volume early Tuesday morning laying out the details of the investigation that the former special counsel Jack Smith conducted into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

The release of the report, which Mr. Trump’s legal team had vehemently fought, is likely to be the Justice Department’s final word on the attempt to use the legal system to hold Mr. Trump accountable for conspiring to subvert the election results. Because Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, prosecutors were forced under a binding Justice Department policy to drop the case against him.

...

In what amounted to his report’s most important finding, Mr. Smith asserted he was confident that his team of prosecutors and investigators had amassed enough evidence to convict Mr. Trump had the case been allowed to go to trial.

The report spent nearly 30 pages recounting the details of how Mr. Trump engaged in multiple criminal conspiracies. Much of that was already in public view through the indictment in the case and a lengthy evidentiary memo that Mr. Smith filed in October as part of the fallout from the Supreme Court’s ruling that Mr. Trump enjoyed presumptive immunity for his official acts as president.

Mr. Smith said his office “stands fully behind” both “the strength of the government’s proof” and “the merits of the prosecution.” And despite the major setbacks he faced in his more than two years of pursuing the case, he stuck by the core accusations leveled against Mr. Trump.

“The through line of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit — knowingly false claims of election fraud — and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process,” Mr. Smith wrote.

Biden on J6

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book looks at 2024. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.

President Biden at WP:

In time, there will be Americans who didn’t witness the Jan. 6 riot firsthand but will learn about it from footage and testimony of that day, from what is written in history books and from the truth we pass on to our children. We cannot allow the truth to be lost.

Thousands of rioters crossed the National Mall and climbed the Capitol walls, smashing windows and kicking down doors. Just blocks away, a bomb was found near the location of the incoming vice president, threatening her life. Law enforcement officials were beaten, dragged, knocked unconscious and stomped upon. Some police officers ultimately died as a result.

As president-elect that day, I spoke to the country and called for peace, and for the certification to resume.

Four years later, leaving office, I am determined to do everything I can to respect the peaceful transfer of power and restore the traditions we have long respected in America. The election will be certified peacefully. I have invited the incoming president to the White House on the morning of Jan. 20, and I will be present for his inauguration that afternoon.

Trump Wants to Jail the J6 Committee

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Our next book looks at the return of Donald Trump.

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

Tommy Christopher at Mediaite:

Trump sat for an exclusive interview that aired on Sunday morning’s edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, during which Trump lashed out at the members of the committee that investigated the January 6 riot and the circumstances surrounding it. Trump has nominated staunch loyalists Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to lead the Department of Justice and the FBI, respectively.

After Trump repeatedly said they should “all go to jail,” Welker asked him “Are you going to direct” his Justice Department to move against his opponents, and even as he denied he would Trump said “they’ll have to” look into it:

KRISTEN WELKER: We’re going to —

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: For what they did –

KRISTEN WELKER: Yeah –

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: – honestly, they should go to jail.

KRISTEN WELKER: So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail?

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: For what they did –

KRISTEN WELKER: Everyone on the committee you think –

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I think everybody –

KRISTEN WELKER: – should go to jail?

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: – on the — anybody that voted in favor –

KRISTEN WELKER: Are you going to direct your FBI director –

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: No.

KRISTEN WELKER: – and your attorney general to send them to jail?

PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to — I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill.

Watch above via NBC’s Meet the Press.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

 Annie Gowen at WP:

For the third time in a week, former president Donald Trump repeated his charge that Democrats allied against him are “the enemy from within” in an interview with Fox News during which he called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “a beautiful thing.”

Trump, in an interview with “Media Buzz” that aired Sunday, referred to Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, as “bad people” who threaten democracy. Interviewer Howard Kurtz asked, “Are you prepared to say now that you will not use law enforcement to punish or prosecute your political opponents?”

Trump responded, “Excuse me, that’s what they’re using on me.”

In a separate Fox News interview that aired on Oct. 13, Trump said that his foes could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard, or, “if really necessary, by the military.” He repeated the line about the “enemy from within” days later during a Fox News town hall event.

“You call Americans who don’t support you ‘the enemy within.’ That’s a pretty ominous phrase to use about other Americans,” Kurtz noted.

“I think that’s accurate,” Trump replied, before referencing Pelosi and Schiff, two outspoken Trump critics.

“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people,” the former president said. “But when you look at shifty Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are to me the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.”

 Michael M. Grynbaum and David McCabe at NYT:

“CBS should lose its license,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” He has repeated his demands in speeches and in interviews, echoing his earlier calls for ABC’s license to be “terminated” because of his displeasure with how the network handled his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump ratcheted up his threats against CBS. “We’re going to subpoena their records,” he told Fox News in an interview, repeating his claim that the network’s edit of Ms. Harris’s recent appearance on “60 Minutes” was misleading. Asked if revoking a broadcast license was a “drastic punishment,” Mr. Trump did not answer directly, instead lobbing a string of insults at Ms. Harris, whom he called “incompetent” and “a Marxist."

PRRI:

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to support their candidate assuming office by force after an election loss.

• Nearly one in five Republicans (19%), including 23% of Republicans who hold a favorable view of Trump, say that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
• About one in ten Democrats (12%), including 12% of Democrats who hold a favorable view of Harris, say that if Harris loses the election, she should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
• Nearly half of Americans (49%) agree that there is a real danger that Trump will use the presidency to become a dictator, compared to only 28% who hold similar concerns about Harris.

Although most Americans reject political violence, Republicans remain more likely than Democrats to support potential political violence.

• Nearly half of Americans (45%) believe Republicans are determined to stay in power, even if that means resorting to political violence, compared with about one-third (35%) who think the same about Democrats.
• Nearly three in ten Republicans (29%) believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 16% of independents and 8% of Democrats.
• Republicans are twice as likely (27%) as independents (14%) or Democrats (12%) to agree that armed everyday citizens should be poll watchers, even if this makes some voters uncomfortable.
• While most Americans (80%) disagree that “if the 2024 presidential election is compromised by voter fraud, everyday Americans will need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even if it requires taking violent actions,” Republicans (22%) are more likely to agree than independents (14%) or Democrats (12%).

Views on whether Trump broke the law trying to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, whether the election was stolen from Trump, and whether those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection are being held hostage by the government are strongly shaped by partisanship and news viewership.

• A slim majority of Americans (53%) agree it is likely that Trump broke the law to try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, though just 17% of Republicans agree. Americans who most trust Fox News (12%) or far-right news outlets (4%) are the least likely to believe Trump broke the law to stay in power after losing the election.
• More than six in ten Republicans (62%), compared with 27% of independents and 4% of Democrats, believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Americans who most trust far-right TV news outlets (84%) and Fox News (64%) are the most likely to agree with the statement that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
• Only one in four Americans (25%) agree with Trump’s frequent claim that “the people convicted for their role in the violent Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol are really patriots who are being held hostage by the government.” Republicans (46%) are more than twice as likely as independents (20%) and about seven times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree with this statement.

 

Voters Should Care About Democracy, but They Just Don't

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.

A reality check from Ruy Teixeira:

1. To begin with, preserving/defending/whatever democracy persistently trails the economy/inflation as the issue voters think is most important, even when the democracy issue is specifically mentioned as part of a list.

2. And when respondents’ most important issue is solicited in an open-ended format, where respondents give an unprompted, top-of-mind answer, democracy simply does not rate very high. In the most recent Gallup poll, only 4 percent fall into a bucket they term “elections/election reform/democracy.” This vastly trails key economic problems, immigration, etc.

3. Even more recently, the new New York Times/Siena poll finds just 5 percent of voters (3 percent of working-class voters) saying “the state of democracy/corruption” will be the most important issue in deciding on their November vote, again substantially trailing the same set of issues. In an interesting followup, the poll asked voters who they thought could do a better job of handling whatever issue they designated as most important. By 14 points (24 points among the working class), voters thought Trump could do a better job than Biden of handling that issue.

4. Further undercutting the Biden campaign theory, an earlier New York Times poll asked voters what was the one thing they remembered most from Trump’s presidency; that most definitely was not January 6th. Just 5 percent mentioned it, again dwarfed by other events and trends.

5. And, as John Sides has pointed out, Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was not attributable to running on democracy or anything like that. Campaign messages and advertisements focused instead on the economy, the pandemic, health care and other less abstract issues. If there was a broader theme, it was a return to normalcy not saving democracy.

6. So, democracy does not appear to be the mega-salient issue the Biden campaign is envisioning. What makes the apparent drive to center the issue in the Biden campaign even less understandable is that the issue, as an issue, does not even cut very much in Biden’s direction unlike, say, abortion rights or health care. This is because preserving/defending democracy means different things to different voters; many voters don’t see the choice between Biden and Trump on the issue as blindingly obvious. They don’t, as the Democratic faithful would have it, believe Biden = democracy and Trump = fascism. Many see Trump as their paladin and view Biden and the Democrats as privileging the interests and preferences of their supporters, especially educated elites, in a distinctly non-democratic way.

7. That explains why Biden is not typically preferred by much over Trump on democracy and related issues. One of the most favorable results is in the latest Fox News poll where Biden is preferred over Trump by a modest 6 points on “the future of American democracy.” Even here, Trump gets the nod over Biden by 4 points among working class voters.

8. And there are many results that aren’t nearly so favorable. A March Wall Street Journal poll of battleground states had Biden ahead by just a point on “protecting democracy.” Similarly, over two waves of Democracy Corps’ battleground surveys, Biden and the Democrats were favored over Trump and the Republicans by an average of only 3.5 points on “presidents not being able to act as autocrats,” by 2.5 points on “democracy being secure,” and by 2 points on “protecting democracy” (first wave only). And Trump and the Republicans were favored over Biden and the Democrats by 1.5 points on “opposing extremism” (!) and by 5 points on “protecting the US constitution” (!!). All this hardly makes the democracy issue seem like a slam-dunk for the Biden campaign.

9. Even more devastating, a massive (3,500 registered voters) Washington Post/George Mason Schar School April-May survey of the battleground states found Trump favored over Biden by 11 points on who could do a better job handling “threats to democracy in the US.” And among a group of voters the survey dubbed “the Deciders,” more peripheral voters who will surge into the voting pool in 2024 and likely decide the election, Trump is favored by 9 points over Biden to safeguard democracy.

10. Looking over these data, one must conclude that the Biden campaign plan is to somehow dramatically raise the salience of democracy and January 6th among ordinary voters in coming months and simultaneously generate a robust advantage on the issue among these same voters. This is not impossible but it does not really seem advisable; a little like drawing to an inside straight in poker. You might make it but you probably won’t.

Fake Elector Update

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.

Rashad Rose at CNN:

Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman, one of the so-called fake electors charged in the Arizona 2020 election subversion case, announced Saturday that he’s been elected as a Republican National Committee national committeeman for the state.

“I’m humbled and honored to have been elected as the next RNC National Committeeman for Arizona!,” Hoffman said in a post on X Saturday.

His selection comes just days after a grand jury in Arizona handed up an indictment against former President Donald Trump’s allies, including Hoffman, over their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

CNN previously reported that Hoffman sent a two-page letter to former Vice President Mike Pence on January 5, 2021, asking him to order that Arizona’s electors not be decided by the popular vote of the citizens, but instead by the members of the state legislature.

...

Boris Epshteyn, a former White House aide who remains one of Trump’s closest advisers; former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and Rudy Giuliani are also among those who have been indicted, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

While Trump is not among those charged in Arizona, the details in the indictment suggest he is “Unindicted Coconspirator 1.”

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez at WP:

Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, two state senators and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA.

 

On Easter: Trump, Trumpists, and God

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

On Easter morning, Trump posted an article in two separate publications that said he is “The Chosen One” and “a miracle” who was “sent by God” to save America. Story …https://t.co/fIPHgSxfEc

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 31, 2024

Happy Easter from John Eastman’s family. https://t.co/pdFEX8fV0f pic.twitter.com/AAvnehfTac

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 31, 2024

Trump Makes Common Cause with Criminals

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

Shelby Talcott at Semafor:

The former president and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee has put the devoted supporters charged with January 6 crimes at the heart of his campaign. He began his first major campaign rally last March firing up the Waco, Texas crowd by playing “Justice for All,” a song he helped produce with the “J6 Prison Choir.” It has since become a staple of his events. On Truth Social last week, Trump wrote that one of his “first acts as your next President” would be to “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned.”

The story of Trump’s shift — from reluctant denunciations to direct support for those charged in connection with the day’s events — offers a glimpse into the workings of his mind, and of his political operation. The change began gradually, soon after he left office and weathered impeachment proceedings. Two months after he resumed civilian life at Mar-a-Lago, the president described the crowd to two visiting Washington Post reporters as “loving,” and offered a defense of their behavior: Capitol Police had “ushered” them into the building, he said, and were “hugging and kissing” them — a view belied by video footage and widely rejected by the courts. Aides to Trump point to remarks from this period as evidence he always cared about the cause of January 6th defendants.

A detailed examination of his public statements and ten interviews with people now involved in the movement to support January 6 defendants show a gradual path from Trump’s instinctive support for some of the most hardcore members of his own MAGA movement to a semi-formal alliance with an organization founded by the family member of a January 6 convict.

That path was smoothed in part by a handful of women — from the high-profile Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to lesser-known figures like Trump campaign staffer Joanna Miller Wischer and Cynthia Hughes, who founded the Patriot Freedom Project. They made the case to him that at least some of his devoted followers charged in the riot were jailed unjustly, and were being treated poorly.

Another crucial factor in Trump’s growing support for the cause may have been his own confrontation with American law enforcement, including over charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which has become a centerpiece of his campaign for president.

“The biggest thing that helped us was him getting arrested, so that the rest of the world can see what is happening to J-6’ers,” Tamara Perryman, whose husband Brian Jackson was charged in connection with the riot, told Semafor during the nightly vigil